Paolo Di Canio’s refusal to make a temporary switch to 4-5-1 arguably resulted in the sack.
Photograph: Tony Marshall/Getty Images

When Paolo Di Canio managed Swindon Town he once volunteered to run a 2km charity race but, having taken a wrong turn, ended up completing a half marathon by mistake.

It was classic Di Canio but he could be forgiven for regarding his six-month, 13-game tenure in charge of Sunderland as a similar sort of accident. At first it seemed deceptively straightforward but once Roberto De Fanti, the director of football, signed 14 players, 13 of them foreign and only five with previous Premier League experience, this summer and asked the manager to mould them into a cohesive unit he confronted a daunting test.

Di Canio failed it but, despite some undeniably self-destructive moments along the way, it would be harsh were the experience to destroy a fledgling managerial career which saw the Italian record top marks in his coaching exams before leading Swindon out of League Two, earning high praise from Sir Alex Ferguson in the process.

Much has rightly been made of Di Canio's sometimes awkward relationships with his players, particularly his willingness to criticise them publicly but even the most experienced managers would surely have struggled to hit the ground running at the Stadium of Light this season.

Sunday morning's training-ground team meeting, called by the Italian, may have been a watershed moment, when relationships fractured beyond repair and insiders sent discreet messages to the board regarding the unhappiness of certain players, but things might not have reached a point of apparently near-mutinous no return had the recruitment strategy been a little different.

On Saturday, as Sunderland lost 3-0 at West Bromwich Albion, Tom Huddlestone proved the key to Hull City's 3-2 win at Newcastle. Di Canio had been desperate to acquire the midfielder from Spurs, repeatedly citing Huddlestone as his principal target, but the deal did not happen and the task stiffened.

When, late last March, Ellis Short, Sunderland's American owner, asked Di Canio to succeed Martin O'Neill with the team seemingly doomed to relegation the former West Ham and Lazio striker, ready and waiting for his Premier League chance, accepted a high-risk challenge

He proved equal to it, keeping Sunderland in the top division partly thanks to a stirring 3-0 win at Newcastle. By then the initial furore surrounding his political beliefs, with Di Canio's public renunciation of fascism eventually following David Miliband's outraged resignation as Sunderland's vice-president, was fast evaporating.

Miliband would prove the least of the 45-year-old's problems. Far greater challenges lurked in a dressing room which Di Canio claimed harboured "unprofessional" habits. Briefed to overhaul the mentality of a club which had become synonymous with mediocrity in recent seasons, he needed no further encouragement, approaching the task with an evangelical zeal.

A flurry of fines was issued, with the Professional Footballers' Association becoming involved last May when Titus Bramble, now departed, objected to punishment for failure to attend a weights session and Phil Bardsley, the right-back, became upset at the sanctions imposed for his being photographed lying in a bed of £50 notes in a casino on a night off.

Undeterred, Di Canio proclaimed the dawning of "a revolution". Although it was the sort of regime common in many European countries – ketchup and cola were among the banned food and beverages while caffeine intake was rationed – it did not appeal to the "old guard". Watching the 1-0 home defeat by Fulham from the sidelines, Bardsley posted a message mocking the result on social media and was duly suspended.

Battle lines had been drawn but the manager's ostensibly laudable determination that his team of virtual strangers should play a boldly adventurous brand of 4-2-4 featuring stylish passing from the back arguably proved even more damaging. Despite some immensely encouraging passages of play, Sunderland were regularly overrun in midfield. Di Canio's refusal to make a temporary switch to 4-5-1 possibly led to the sack.

In the course of starring for a Milan XI in Steve Harper's charity testimonial at Newcastle this month, he passed up a chance to shoot when one on one with the keeper, instead laying the ball off. "My quads felt like Mozzarella cheese. The risk of missing was too high," he said. If only similar circumspection had been applied to the day job.

As someone who once owned a holiday home in Egypt he should have been aware that revolutions can be bloody, messy and extremely painful but, ignoring the potential collateral damage, he audaciously drove his tanks over scores of sensibilties.

An intelligent man, not lacking humour or charm, Di Canio customarily outlined his principles and vision in vivid avalanches of words, often referring to himself in the third person. The underlying message usually made excellent sense but a reluctance to compromise or take the pragmatic route ultimately cost him dear.

Openly criticising highly paid professional footballers for public errors is a managerial tightrope act regularly pulled off by Harry Redknapp down the seasons but, on Wearside, sensitive egos were wounded and already delicate trust trampled on.

Before long the critics Di Canio dubbed "crows" were circling. Fans attending a charity lunch with Sunderland's manager last week were charmed by this would-be Roman emperor's dream of galloping along Hadrian's Wall on horseback but Short already suspected that last season's saviour was simply too unconventionally high maintenance to implement De Fanti's ambitious blueprint.